How To Set Google As Default In Windows 10 Taskbar Search

With default settings, Windows 10 allows you search the web right from the taskbar search box. The search uses Bing as the web search engine and opens search results in the default web browser of Windows 10.

As you likely know by now, there is no setting under Settings app or Control Panel to use Google as the default search in taskbar or Start menu search, instead of the default Bing search engine.

After reading the workaround, some users asked us if it’s possible to make Google as the default search engine in Windows 10 taskbar without setting Chrome as the default browser.

Make Google the default search in Windows 10 taskbar

It looks like Mozilla, the developer of Firefox, is also not happy with Microsoft’s decision to offer no settings to change the default web search engine used in the taskbar or Start menu search box in Windows 10.

In the latest Nightly build (version 42), Mozilla has added a new option labelled “Use this search engine for searches from Windows”, and is enabled by default. The option allows you to easily set Google as the default search engine in Windows 10 taskbar. In fact, you can set any other search engine like Yahoo! and DuckDuckGo as the default search of the taskbar using this new feature. Needless to say that the feature works only when you set Firefox as your default browser.

The only catch is that the default search in Windows 10 taskbar will be the default search engine in Firefox as well, which means that the default search engine in Firefox and Windows 10’s taskbar search will be the same.

Setting Google as the default search

To make Google as the default taskbar search engine in Windows 10 or set any other search engine as the default, you just need to complete the following steps.

Step 1: First, download the latest version of Firefox Nightly build from this page of Mozilla, and then install the same on your PC. Note that you can install Firefox Nightly alongside the stable build without any issues.

NOTE: You won’t need to download and install the Nightly version of Firefox once Mozilla releases the final version of Firefox 42. We will update this guide once the final version of Firefox 42.0 is out.

Step 2: After installing Firefox 42 or above version, open Firefox Options page. To open it, click the Open menu button (see below picture) and then click Options.

Step 3: On the left-pane, click Search to view all search related settings on the right-side.

Step 4: Now, under Default Search Engine section, select Google or any other search engine that you want to set as the default search in Windows 10 taskbar and Firefox search.

Step 5: Finally, enable the option titled Use this search engine for searches from Windows option, it’s not enabled already.

That’s it! Google should now be your default search engine in Windows 10 taskbar (for web search) as well as in the Firefox browser. Good luck!

Comments

Open Internet Explorer
Go to Tools->Managed Add-ons->Search Providers
Add your search provider via the Find more search providers… link
Make sure you check the option Search in the address bar and the search box on the new tab page
Move the new entry to the top of the listing order